Whilst I’m not massively busy, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for projects to make my fortune. I am willing to sell the rights to all or some of these for the right price…

Book Ideas

Racist Homophobic Golf Cops – A group of racist, homophobic, golf playing San Francisco police officers begin to question each others views when a flamboyantly homosexual part time Tiger Woods impersonator joins their precinct.

Schnapp To It! – A self help book, achieve and surpass your goals using a peach schnapps based reward system. Whatever it is you’ve been putting off… pour yourself a drink… and schnapp to it!

Just The Flax – A 189 page fact filled dossier on all things Flax. Find out everything about the blue-flowered herbaceous plant that is cultivated for its seed (linseed) and for textile fibre made from its stalks. Flaxinating!

Love Re-Kindle-d – After her Amazon e-reader malfunctions outside of its 24 month warranty period, a forty something divorcee is surprised to find the only authorised repairman is the man she first fell in love with as a teenage girl… Is there such a thing as a second chance? Or are parts no longer available?

TV Show Ideas

Keel Or No Keel – Game show in which custom made boats are the prize. Contestants open 22 identical sealed red shipping containers, each container contains a differently sized keel. Negotiating with an unseen Master Ship Builder, the larger the keel, the larger their boat win!

Adam And Alfred – Adam West plays a lonely former millionaire, with a dwindling fortune. His elderly butler Alfred is convinced Adam is crime fighting flying mammal based superhero “Batman”. To keep up the pretence, Adam must come up with increasingly elaborate schemes, on a budget, or risk destroying everything Alfred has ever believed in.

15 to 15 – A game show in which 15 contestants battle it out, facing round after round of trivia question. Each contestant has three lives, each wrong answer loses them a life. When they are out of lives, they get given more. Thus it becomes a test of endurance, who can stand standing at a podium answering questions the longest? If after 9 hours of filming there is more than one contestant left standing, the prize will be shared amongst the studio audience (if any remain).

Printing out “HIRED”, in a large font, on a small cardboard flashcard, and flashing at the interview panel after each question, is a great technique.

Whilst looking for a new position, and facing the prospect of having to woo another potential employer, I thought perhaps prudent to prepare myself for common interview questions.

Employers are looking for candidates that project an image of competency and trust. It is your job to convince them that you will do instead.

– What are the qualities of a good leader?
Good leaders are generally those that know they’re rubbish and deliberately stop themselves from having too much input.

– How well did your college experience prepare you for this job?
One of my favourite college experiences was dropping small plastic parachute men from the 4th floor tower block window. This in no way prepared me for this job. However, if the company would consider relocating to a higher floor, I may have some creative input.

– What is your greatest achievement outside of work?
I once got hit in the face with a tennis racket, whilst playing rounders. That’s rare.

– Tell me about yourself.
I want you to employ me. I also do not want to lie. Hence, I will not be telling you anything about myself.

– When were you most satisfied in your job?
I think the brief encounter I had in the upstairs stockroom with that surprisingly perky sales assistant qualifies.

– Have you ever had to deal with conflicting deadlines?
Conflicting deadlines are fortunately all too common. I say fortunately, because when you have conflicting deadlines it’s the perfect excuse to blame someone else and use all your remaining time for something you’re actually interested in. Perhaps Uno.

– Please give an example of a team experience you found disappointing.
England’s Euro 1996 campaign.

– Are you planning to continue your studies?
I own a book, if that counts.

– How long would you stay with our company?
Long enough to collect between £30 and £40 of company stationary, but not long enough that I can actually be held accountable for anything.

– Do you think you are overqualified for this position?
I concede that at first glance I may appear overqualified, however 90% of my qualifications are fictitious, and left in from the CV I used as a template.

– If you were hiring a person for this job, what would you look for?
I would probably pick someone fantastic on paper, but one that I know to have a serious flaw. That way I could reasonably defend the appointment if challenged, whilst knowing they they could never reach a level of performance to threaten my position.

– How do you feel about taking no for an answer?
I am used to it. I have rejection down to an art.

– When given an important assignment, how do you approach it?
I skirt around it, eventually someone junior will do and I can take all credit.

– What was the most complex assignment you have had?
When I was seven years old, my grandad gave me a Rubiks cube.

– Where do you see yourself in five years time?
In five years time, I will have probably have been caught breaching my parole conditions, and will be trading cigarettes in E wing.

– Tell me about your proudest achievement.
Once, I made a model of Ironbridge using only the boxes of chocolate fingers and a wire coat hangar.

– How did you react when faced with constant time pressure?
I do not react. Yes, I could ease pressure by skipping one of my afternoon naps. No, I’m not going to.

– Give me an example that best describes your organizational skills.
I once failed to have a piss up at a brewery. I think that covers it.

– What negative thing would your last boss say about you?
Possibly that I was too goal oriented, and perhaps overall overly competitive. Just an inconsiderate lover generally really.

– What would make you happy in a job?
Either a ridiculously vague but impressive sounding job title, or a storm trooper costumed secretary.

– What do you think, would you be willing to travel for work?
No I expect you to move the premises to suit me. Perhaps invest in a caravan and sell from the back of it.

– What is the difference between a good position and an excellent one?
I have forwarded this question to “Dear Deirdre”.

– What have you been doing since your last job?
Browsing eBay and chatting on Facebook, that was my last job, and since then it’s become a rewarding hobby.

WIP = Work in progress. I will come back to this and fettle it and continue it and give it direction. For now it’s here to remind me to do so.

—————-

It wasn’t a yes, it wasn’t a no. To describe it accurately would be to call it a murble. Not a whole murmur, not a complete gurgle, an unhappy marriage of involuntary sounds that was unnatural as it was unhelpful.

Here I was, down on one knee, an entire restaurant (well, five diners, two waiters and a novelty lobster) staring at us, and all she could manage was a murble.

Racing through my mind in that moment was a News 24 midday bulletin of speculation. Is she silently choking on a chicken nugget and unable to reply? Is she so lost in emotion that she can’t find words to even begin to describe her undeniable never-ending love for me? Is it that she started a lesbian affair with an Avon representative seven months ago and was actually planning on breaking up with me somewhere in between finishing dessert and eating the complimentary chocolate mint?

Of course, these were just the crazed thoughts of a man bearing his soul to the women of his dreams. Surely, I needn’t worry.

I don’t think there’s a need to go into complete detail on what happened next, but suffice to say I left the restaurant alone, the receipt had a 20% “traumatic and humiliating experience” deduction (so thoughtful of them to itemise it) and the next morning I emptied every Avon branded toiletry I could find into a black bag – two black bags in fact (I really should have twigged).

I wasn’t going to dwell though. After purging my bathroom entirely of her influence, I ran myself a nice warm, unscented bath, washed my hair with Fairy liquid and was ready to face the day.

‘First day of the rest of my life’ to do list:

1) Buy Head & Shoulders
2) Investigate H.Samuel returns policy
3) Get back in the game!

1 was easy – though just for the record, when faced with a grown man buying anti-dandruff shampoo and crying; “Have you considered the L’Oreal Kids no-more-tears range?” is not an appropriate question to ask.

Number 2, was easily achievable, though I did chicken out of complete honesty, and I ended up telling the manager of the jewellers that my stunning and non-lesbian wife-to-be merely wanted to pick the ring herself. A lie that I regretted almost immediately.

With £899 of H Samuel store credit in my wallet, I had the rest of the day to get back out there. Yes we’d only just broken up, yes it was a little bit soon, but I was going to show her that I was just as capable of moving on as she was.

..Maybe I could give her cousin a call, she’d been very flirtatious at that family get-together I got dragged to, and she never stopped sending postcards back when she emigrated to.. ah. Maybe not.

Perhaps I could really show her, a perfect mirror image of lustful behaviour. Yeah! I could strike up something with the Kleen-eze man.

Perhaps I needed to think this through a little bit more.

I should just go out. On my own. Cruise around the bars. I was a young, attractive, sexy, always in demand kind of guy. A guy like that would have no problem finding a lucky lady to go home with.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t a guy like that. To be entirely accurate, what I meant to say was “I was a young, attractive, sexy, always in demand kind of guy, once.” Not now. Now I was middle aged, forgettable, and worked in biscuit factory.

The chocolate orange fell from the milkman’s hand. It rolled down the cobbled hill like an actual orange might, if it were made from chocolate. The butcher, the baker, and the candle stick maker all looked on, they stood with mouths agasp.

“Why are you standing there? With mouths agasp?” – said the butcher.

“That’s my question!” squawked the milkman.

“So it is!” said candle stick maker.

“And that was my exclamation!” said the baker.

“I think we had better start again” said the chocolate orange.

Without a further word said, the milkman retrieved the chocolate orange. It took him mere seconds, so as not to disturb the flow of this story. If I had more time, and if it wouldn’t disrupt the tension of the setting, I would explain how it would have taken him approximately seven minutes. It had in fact rolled some distance, partly due to the camber of the street, partly due to the unevenness of the cobbles, and partly because it was being used as a cricket ball by an errant schoolboy.

After mere seconds (or seven minutes), of fielding, the milkman finally had possession of the chocolate orange once again. Now he strode back, and stood approximately where he had stood before. A position in the street as of yet not described.

The butcher, the baker, and the candle stick maker all stood, with mouths agasp.

“I haven’t dropped it yet!” – the milkman’s comment was fair. He hadn’t. Their gasping was unprompted.

Satisfied that both the mouth of the milkman and the mouth of the baker were no longer agasp – he dropped the chocolate orange.

This time it rolled down the street clumsily, like an actual orange might, if it were made of chocolate, and had been dropped twice already, and been used as a cricket ball, for the best part of seven minutes.

Looking over, the milkman saw the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker now all stood with their mouths agasp. He knew at least two of them were astonished at seeing him drop the orange the second time. The candlestick maker was agasp – there was no doubt – but the milkman had forgotten to check before, and it may be that he was still at least somewhat surprised by the first incident.

“Why are you standing there? With mouth agasp?” he said.

“Beca-”

The milkman stopped the baker before he finished even one word – one word we can reasonably assume was going to be “because”.

“Not you baker.” bawled the milkman, teeth gritted like a short story character losing patience with his creator. “I want to know why the candle stick maker has his mouth agasp. Is it because I dropped the chocolate orange the first time, or the second time?”

Not wanting to disrupt the narrative, the candle stick maker lied, he knew explaining that he hadn’t noticed either dropping of the chocolate orange would take up more time, and with a word count already in the low 470s he really wanted to get on with some meaningful character development.

“The latter” the candle stick maker retorted – he knew how to lie.

“I believe you” – the milkman also knew how to lie, he didn’t believe him at all. He knew the word count. He knew the stakes. He knew the candle stick maker.

At this point the butcher and the baker looked at each other uneasily, a mutual glance that made each realise that they were in the centre of a scenario that really didn’t interest or concern them. Especially now there was little chance of actually getting to eat the chocolate orange.

In my head, for some time there’s been the makings of a blog entry, in which I complain about other internet users, and point out exactly why everything they post and share is entirely pointless and unworthy.

In particular, I have pre-prepared rants on:

– People who use the internet to attention seek
– People who use the internet to be unkind to others
– Practically everyone else as well

I would talk about the childish behaviour, unreasoned arguments, blatant attention seeking, and I’d probably end up rather smugly patting myself on the back for being different (I normally do).

I can’t write that as an entry, because the hypocrisy could be fatal, and I don’t think I can come to a constructive conclusion.

Furthermore, the more I think about it, the more I think the problem might actually be with me.

Apparently, I am one of over 7,000,000,000 (Seven billion) people in the world.

Of those, approximately 3,000,000,000 (Three billion) people have internet access.

So, there’s approximately 2,999,999,999 (Two billion, nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine)* people across the globe I could connect with. 98 percent of these are located on entirely separate land masses to myself – and yet, I use the internet to speak to people that shop in the same Tesco.

I clearly have no grounds to complain about them, surely if any of them were that bad, I’d have done something about it already, and probably have changed supermarkets.

However, that still leaves the people that I don’t know, the strangers on Facebook that pop into my news feed, the commenters on news websites, and all those infantile discussions on Reddit I scroll through. Maybe I could legitimately complain about them.

Again, they are perhaps not a fully representative cross section of the 3 billion internet users, in fact I’m willing to bet they mainly consist of students and the unemployed. They are most likely, mainly British and American, but they are at least not within walking distance of me.

Unfortunately, if I were to do that, I’d still be ignoring the real issue. That instead of bettering myself, with a tool that gives me effectively, access to all of humanity’s recorded knowledge and experience to date, I’ve been using it to read YouTube comments. Often on videos I haven’t even watched.

There’s a practically infinite possibility to learn, and instead I’m judging people I’ve never met.

Why do I do this? Perhaps because it’s an easy way of feeling better about myself, without actually being any better.

I am a person on the internet, and clearly I have a problem.

*I minused myself, I’m not talking to myself over the internet. That would be madness. Surely that’s what broken walkie talkies are for?

You might be ahead of me, you might be behind, you might be in the year 2007. In which case you’re either Ethiopian, or still buying your calendars from the bargain bin in The Works.

This year I decided, should be about embracing the new.

It has been my intent to seize opportunities, create adventure, and gesture wildly at confused strangers to create a sense of urgency (when actual opportunity and adventure have been lacking).

So, in late December, when work (which is now Poundland – more or less on that subject another time) asked me to go and work in another store for a few weeks I said “Yes! Of course!”. A short interlude elsewhere to refresh my work life could do the world of good.

This was four months ago. The adventure is now more of a tiresome slog.

Still, I did not refuse the opportunity, and we will see if it proves rewarding. Certainly I’ve made valuable new friendships.

Again in the spirit of new things, I booked an intensive driving course. Unfortunately, half way through the driving course I decided to try something else new, gastritis, and my first visit to a doctor in 8 years…

..so I’m not quite driving yet. Watch this space.

It’s not all slog and sickness however, there are definitely positives. I have been to Nottingham – where I enjoyed their castle and art gallery, booked tickets to see Paul Merton, this week I’m going canoeing as part of a stag weekend – and hopefully there’s much more to come.

My brother and I at Nottingham castle.

There’s a theme in these positives, and it’s not the new, but the pre-existing. Nottingham would have been nothing more than a reminder of 1990’s shop fittings and a feigned interest in a basically fictitious hooded criminal had it not been for the friends and family with me. Canoeing is a chance to spend time with friends I haven’t seen in far too long, and although Paul Merton has his name on the tickets, it’s still not him I’ll be most looking forward to seeing that evening.

What I’m trying to say, is I’m really enjoying embracing the new, because it complements perfectly with what I already have.

Today I was going through some old paperwork, and I found some of my school work. Mostly boring worksheets, but I found this ‘creative writing’ piece, written by a tiny Timmington aged 10. Unfortunately, unfinished, here it is:

Monday 12th April ’99’

Time Traveller

Peter Perkins was getting ready to go to a meeting when the phone rang, it was the nuclear power plant where he worked. They were having a meltdown and needed his help. Peter picked up his keys and rushed out into his honda prelude (a car) and drove away in a cloud of smoke. At the plant people were rushing about in radiation suits and there were red lights everywhere. Peter put on radiation suit and went into the reactor core, he was fiddling with some nuclear rod’s when there was a big explosion, Peter got knocked out. 15 minutes later Peter woke up in a gigantic metal city. He woke up dazed so he sat down to clear his head, suddenly some guards came the were dressed in police uniforms with the word POLICE and Guard written on in marker pen. The guards locked Peter in a ford capri wich had lost all it’s doors. The guards took him into a old school that had been converted into a sort of dungeon, Peter was taken into a room with old ripped pictures on 1 wall and model houses on another. Peter was left for about 15 minutes until a big but short man with

(End)

Original:

Not quite sure how you lock someone in a car with it’s doors missing…. but there you go, obviously 10 year old Timmington didn’t think this through thoroughly enough.

If you have seen my handwriting currently, you may notice how little little it has changed in the last 14 years… not a bad thing I think.

I was talking to my thoroughly adequate friend Leasky, and I thought it about time I update my trusty blog.

When I last posted, I was working in Millets in King’s Lynn and not doing much else. I was a carefree spirit. Youthful, handsome, a man many aspired to but even more avoided. Between then and now, my shop closed down, I got promoted to Supervisor in a shop in Peterborough, I taught myself watch repair, and I now deal in TAG Heuer watches in my spare time.

This is me then:

This is me now:

This is Claudia Schiffer:

This is 1992 General Election runner up Neil Kinnock:

Then, to give 2014 a dramatic twist, in the last week I have resigned from my job, and I am now floundering around job websites to make sure I am still in work when I finish my notice period, in just under 3 weeks time.

So far I’ve had an interview at Sainsbury’s, and spent every free moment applying for absolutely everything within reasonable bus distance that doesn’t require me to change my gender, sexual orientation, or the ribbons in old fashioned typewriters*.

Wish me luck…

*No jobs have thus far required me to change the ribbons in old fashioned typewriters, but I like to include the fact that I can’t in my “Strengths and Weaknesses”. As long as I remember to include my Microsoft Office skills as a strength, my only weakness will be cancelled out and I will appear perfect.

I’ve got a bit of time on my hands at the moment. I’ve already had one week off, and now I’m not back until November 1st.

It’s good, because I don’t have to go to work.
It’s bad, because I can’t go to work.

Still, luckily I’ve had Facebook to distract me, and a spot of pub here and there. I’ve also been thinking about pointless things, such as:

Alternate Movie Titles and their improved plots

Paving Private Ryan –
A tragically misheard order leads to a woman’s last remaining son to be crushed by terracotta slabs, albeit very professionally, pleasantly laid out between a rock garden and an area of raised decking.

Dos Boot –
Whilst patrolling the North Atlantic, the crew of a German U-Boat must rely on only their wits, courage, and MS DOS 6.1.

Back To The Fuhrer –
A German teenager gets transported back to 1935 in a nuclear powered Volkswagen, but only by re-writing history and winning World War 2 for the Nazi’s can he refine the plutonium to get home.

Flirty Harry –
A San Francisco cop with little regard for the rules of etiquette tries to stop a serial killer with flattery.

Kite Club –
An office employee and a soap salesman build a global organization to help vent male aggression, via colourful tethered aircraft.

It’s A Wonderful Fife –
An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman by showing what investment opportunity’s there are to be had by moving to an area of Eastern Scotland.

Good Dill Hunting –
Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT, has a gift for cookery but needs help from a psychologist to find an adequate supply of a perennial herb.
—————-

Recently, I bought a painting from China. Only spent a fiver on it, a mass produced painting of a sailing ship.

Rested on a newspaper to get a sense of scale, it's a painting of a ship. Classy.

I thought my room needed more pictures, and it’s a pleasant enough painting, nicely sized to go on my wall without being too over the top.

So I ordered another, this time from a different website, I chose a well known painting this time, “The Scream” by Edvard Munch.

Today it arrived.

Perhaps it's just a tad overpackaged..

Nope, it's massive.

Where I had thought I was buying a 24 x 36 centimetre oil painting, roughly the size of an A4 piece of a paper, I was in fact buying a 24 x 36 inch oil painting. Four times the size of a newspaper (which again I’ve placed underneath to show scale).

Oops.

It does somewhat dominate my room, and it does give out something of an overwhelming sense of fear and anxiety, but it’s not bad for £25 quid…